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Tim Agne is a stay-at-home dad, trophy husband, writer and sometimes teacher in Phoenix, Arzona. He used to be an online producer for daily newspapers, where he played videogame critic, movie podcaster, energy-drink reviewer, social-media expert. Currently he is clean-shaven. Read more »

Teen Titans Go! is a goofball show on Cartoon Network about a team of young superheroes lead by Robin. They often fail at protecting Jump City from B-list villains because they’re too distracted by burgers and burritos. Needless to say, I identify. Continue reading Teen Titans Go! Series 1 blind bag codes

I was selfish. I was arrogant. I willfully contributed to an environmental and public-health crisis that is putting my children, your children, everyone at risk. All I can say is I’m sorry, I’ve changed, and I’ll do my best to make this right.

I’m talking about antibacterial soap. Chemicals like triclosan and triclocarban have contributed to the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria like MRSA. They’re known endocrine disruptors that our babies wind up consuming in breast milk. They’re contaminating our water supply.

The state of Minnesota has banned triclosan, and the FDA is mulling a national ban on antibacterial soap (big update on this below). For more on the problem, check out this article from Arizona State University (go Devils).

Batman won’t take his youngest son to see Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

“Four years old is a little young to see this whole movie,” Ben Affleck told the Associated Press. “I don’t want him to have nightmares.”

My 4-year-old son already has a ticket to the movie. With the opening-night crowd. On the biggest movie screen in the state. In brain-exploding IMAX 3D. Go big or go back to the Batcave, I always say.

You might be thinking I’m a terrible parent and an even worse moviegoer. Maybe you think I’m the kind of narcissistic father who presumes his own little Batman fan to be cooler than Samuel Garner Affleck. I don’t think I’m any of those things. Here’s why the Champ has earned his ticket. Continue reading Batman v Superman: Why I’m bringing my 4-year-old

Now I’ve spent all my birthday money on year of bi-monthly boxes filled with DC Comics collectibles and wearables from Funko. I always say my son is obsessed with Batman, but maybe I’m the one with the problem.

WANTED: The arms, torso and tail of a spider monkey. I have access to working baby legs, and I know a guy who has a pug. Attack of the Dad is making Puppy Monkey Baby happen IRL.

Why, you ask? I’m hot on social media thanks to brands (Taco Bell quote-tweeted my Instagram). I want to keep this rolling, and being a regular dad just isn’t cutting it.

A year ago, the ads in Super Bowl XLIX were all about dads. Always had an empowering message about how to raise our girls. Dove told us that a well-moisturized man is better at kissing his kids. Nissan had an inscrutable short film about a race-car driver, but Toyota really tugged at our dadstrings.

LEGO’s age recommendations aren’t like the ones on other toys. Those numbers aren’t the minimum age at which child can play with the toy and not choke to death. LEGO’s master builders think a 6-year-old might have the necessary skills to build the Batcopter in Man-Bat Attack without help. That same 6-year-old, however, should require an extra year of LEGO practice to build the Batwing that comes with the Joker’s Steamroller.

I would like to tell you that my son Champ is so brilliant, so focused and so dexterous that he can follow LEGO instructions at a 7-year-old’s level. Nope. In fact, some of these models are so complicated that Mom can’t fix them quite right. Grandma and Grandpa? Also nope.

Thanks to a new Arizona law that allows bars and liquor stores to sell draught beer in take-home containers, all my friends are buzzing about growlers. Usually a 64-ounce brown glass bottle, a growler is great for new parents who can’t waste precious babysitter time sipping craft beer in bars. A growler won’t collect dust like the other well-intentioned bottles of booze in your fridge because the beer doesn’t keep long. Honey, we have to drink this.

My go-to growler this fall has been Four Peaks Pumpkin Porter, a hard-to-find local seasonal that rivals America’s top pumpkin beers. I’ve brought home growlers for entertaining, tailgating and movie night at home. The biggest challenge is that the bottles are fragile and hard to transport in the car. Thanks to my baby son, I have a solution:

Baby's Bumbo floor seat is perfect for transporting a beer growler in the car.

I’m scowling at the milk in the Whole Foods dairy case. Mom’s not pumping at work anymore, so 1-year-old Champ gets cow’s milk, and I fill a boy up with premium. The whole point of this grocery run is to score a half-gallon of organic DHA Omega-3 whole milk.

Yes, becoming a parent turned me into a hippie. I grew big and strong on bovine hormones, antibiotics and genetically modified sugars. It’s too late for me. But over time I began developing vague notions like “we use too many pesticides” and “God intended cows to eat grass.”

I don’t often pay the premium for organic produce, but I started buying organic baby foods because they came in cooler packages. The logical next step, I guess, is to feed a boy organic milk.

Adding DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) is a no-brainer because it’s the trendiest nutrient in infant brain development. If Mom can choke down DHA-supercharged prenatal vitamins every night for nearly two years, Dad can pony up a couple extra bucks of Mom’s hard-earned cash to keep the brain train rolling.

College football season is here, and my Arizona State Sun Devils debut their all-new system tonight. The 7:30 p.m. kickoff is past my baby’s bedtime, but I still want the Champ to dress appropriately on game day.

Small kids need to know that facial hair isn’t scary. My dad never had a beard or mustache to speak of, so my earliest notions of these things came from a handful of mustachioed uncles in the mid ’80s. I remember some of those guys being surly. Others teased me all the time.

Eventually the surly uncles mellowed out. I realized the guys who teased me were hilarious once I got a little older. But it was too late for mustaches. Mustaches were dumb. I wouldn’t even think about growing one until decades later, when indie-rock brainwashing and prostate awareness made it OK to grow a mustache for ONE MONTH ONLY.

That brings me to the next compelling case for scruff: Charity. Anything can be cool if it’s part of a “THON,” and they got thons for everything these days. Dudes have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars by playing the (deliberately) worst videogame ever made for days on end.

The Movember mustache-thon is a long way away, so what charity is this dad’s current beard supporting? I’m glad you asked!

I’m participating in the St. Louis Blues Beard-A-Thon. You can pledge my beard here. This very special thon is a great excuse to keep my beard for another month (I hope) because it benefits hometown charities while giving my favorite hockey team extra intangibles for the playoffs. If you have enough intangibles, you automatically win the Stanley Cup.

So please, pledge a couple bucks for my St. Louis Blues playoff beard. You’ll help my baby son grow to embrace both facial-hair diversity and ridiculous sports traditions.

If my beard doesn’t make any money, I’ll probably get all surly and start teasing my boy all the time. And then I’ll have to shave in shame.